The Bast Seekers

When an Iranian wants to be safe from the police, he reverts to an old custom called bast, or asylum. The recognized sanctuaries are Parliament buildings, mosques, the royal palace and stables, and, curiously enough, telegraph offices. As Iran last week reeled through its second national election in seven months, citizens were scampering in all directions seeking bast.

Eleven National Front politicians dodged into Teheran's modernistic, $9,000,000 Senate building. Sharing their bast was a local cook, famed for his delicious tchelo kabob (tender lamb strips, rice, raw egg, melted butter), who had brought them food and now could not leave without being arrested by the soldiers surrounding the building with fixed bayonets. Twelve thousand university students surged through the streets shouting for "free elections," until dispersed by firemen with high-pressure hoses.

In the rugmaking city of Kerman, anti-government Candidate Mozaffer Baghai had won three times before with large majorities; this time he was credited with only 27 votes against 2,000 for his government opponent. Baghai promptly sent a cable to U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold complaining that the government "has suppressed all rights and freedoms." With equal promptness, bastless Baghai was jailed.

In date-palmed Borazjan, workers closed down the bazaar in a strike against election irregularities. In arid Shahabad, citizens who had found bast in a telegraph office were wiring protests to the Shah. Others contemptuously voted for the Shah's three-month-old son, Crown Prince Reza. Street battles in Teheran between police and antigovernment demonstrators ended with 18 hurt and 80 arrested. The cops boldly hurled tear-gas grenades at one street-corner group and then apologized on learning that they were waiting for a bus.

Perhaps the most discouraged observer of the election farce was Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, 41, who rules as well as reigns in Iran. The Shah would dearly like a reasonable facsimile of democracy in his tortured land, but still wants to run things, and choose ministers, himself. Four years ago, he allowed the creation of an opposition party, and a number of his supporters in Parliament happily obliged. When last August's elections were too crudely rigged by the government, he ordered them annulled. Last week the Shah wearily suspended two provincial governors for crudely flagrant "deviations from regular electoral procedures."

Last week it was clear that the new election was as clumsily and corruptly rigged as that in August. With only 50 out of 200 Majlis seats still to be decided, the two tame government parties had captured 122, while "independents" took 28.

When voters believe the ballot has no meaning, abstentions can speak as loudly as an electoral landslide. One party showed ominous strength, though it won no seats at all. It was the National Front, a loose, left-wing coalition that rallies behind old Mohammed Mossadegh, the Red-lining former Premier who has lived under tacit house arrest since leaving prison in 1956. Convinced that the election would be fraudulent, the National Front ordered it boycotted. And last week the Front was taking credit for the fact that of 600,000 eligible voters in the capital city of Teheran, only 65,000 went to the polls.

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